Raise the Itanic
The Itanium had a hardware x86 emulator but it's performance has always been lacking to say the least. Intel now intends to remove this hardware and use the very same FX!32 technology to run x86 binaries on Itaniums with better results. It can already match a low end Pentium 4 and it'll certainly be interesting to see how well Tanglewood will handle x86 code. It'll be even more interesting to see how it handles 64 bit x86 code which should be a lot simpler than x86-32, Emulators should do a lot better job when the machine they are emulating is simpler. Once a large body of software has moved to 64 bit and 32 bit performance is "good enough" in software I expect we will see a lot of the original x86 ISA removed from the native x86 CPUs - the primary idea extolled by the RISC movement - the simplification of the ISA - will have finally won.
I expect Intel will use this enhanced performance to move the PC world to Itaniums. Some see the apparent pending announcement of an Intel x86-64 as being a major climb down for the worlds largest CPU company, Intel may view it rather differently, they may be using x86-64 as nothing more than a stepping stone to the Itanium and in this case AMD may have unintentionally saved them a lot of effort. Moving into the x86 domain however will make the Itanium's future as a high end CPU rather questionable, perhaps Itanium will replace the x86 as the main desktop CPU and become the major low end server CPU as Xeon is today. Of course it'll be up against the Opteron and it's successors - oddly enough also designed by ex-Alpha designers.
The x86 ISA will eventually become a purely software problem, CPU architects will be free to be truly creative once again and we should see some interesting designs as a result. With Transmeta, AMD's x86-64 extensions and Intel's x86 emulation on Itanium we are seeing the beginning of this process, the x86 is being killed, not by competition from other processors or ISAs, but by the very companies who make them.
Whatever happens this bodes well for the future of Microprocessors, with the x86 instruction set changing into a purely software problem we could see a wider range of CPUs moving into the PC field. Transmeta, Opteron and Itanium all look to be future contenders for your future PCs. One has to wonder what the results would be if IBM was to run Transmeta style "code-morphing" software with a PowerPC 970FX, could PowerPC also be a future PC processor?
The future on the CPU front certainly looks like it is going to be active and interesting. Unfortunately not everything looks good in the future of the PC.
Microsoft will attempt to take over your computer
You may think they have got control of most computers already but this is not the case, they only control the software, I expect Microsoft to try and control the hardware. Why would they want to do such a thing? Simple, if they control the hardware they can make money from it.
There was a time when Microsoft could insist on companies on paying a license fee for all computers whether Windows was included or not. They can't do things like that anymore but you can bet they would sure like to. One way would to do this again would be to get something they have patents on included in PC hardware, they could then get a share of profits from all PCs - even if they are not running Windows.
However that involves adding something to the PC, Intel and AMD are not going to want to share their profits so wont agree to this, not even Microsoft can force something to be added against their wishes. Microsoft need to find a way to force them to agree to add their IP and I think they've found it.
With the X-Box 2 Microsoft can switch to any CPU they want and indeed they are doing exactly that. But, Microsoft are going much further than just swapping parts. With X-Box 2 Microsoft are becoming a hardware company, or to be more precise, a semiconductor company [6]. The change of CPU in the X-Box 2 may only be a taste of what's to come, Microsoft could also use the same hardware to produce an "Office-Box", it'll be plenty fast enough for the majority of applications and with a reasonable emulator it can run the huge back catalogue of x86 applications, most of which do not need massive computing speed.
Microsoft already have much of the technology they need to do this. The .Net CLR (Common Language Runtime) allows them to host .Net applications on different hardware. The VirtualPC emulator they purchased last year allows them to run the existing x86 software base. It can all run on Windows or perhaps the newer cut down version of XP they've just announced. This new version of XP is important because it means they can build a low cost thin client, which will make them difficult to compete with. Of course all this would mean a serious amount of rewriting of the OS, Oddly enough Longhorn is talking a remarkably long time for an OS update, indeed some rumours have suggested it could debut as late as 2007-08. This is a very long time and the resulting development cost will be amazingly expensive, it'll run to several $billion.
Microsoft now have the option of switching to another processor architecture altogether. If AMD or Intel do not want to bend to their wishes Microsoft can threaten to dump x86, with the X-Box 2 they can prove their point. IBM or Motorola may not be keen on adding Microsoft IP either but I doubt either would turn down the opportunity of producing over a hundred million high margin processors a year.
It could be that the widely rumoured multi-CPU PowerPC based X-Box 2 is correct and this is the weapon that they intend to use against AMD and Intel. That the X-Box 2 is PowerPC is almost beyond doubt - what other "state of the art CPU technology" does IBM have? A multi-CPU design allow Microsoft to run not only applications at speed but also removes the need for various hardware devices (sound chip etc.) This is useful in a consumer games machine but this sheer power will also enable emulated x86 applications to be run alongside native apps at speed, a multi-PowerPC X-Box 2 makes a powerful - and low cost - competitor to a PC.
One company who this could effect almost by accident is Apple, they will have more powerful PowerPC processors by then but a low cost box with multiple processors will bring their pricing structure into sharper focus ever before. There are other ways to boost computing power - potentially massively - and I expect Apple will be looking at these to differentiate future Macs.
- "Future of Computing Part 2, Page 1/3"
- "Future of Computing Part 2, Page 2/3"
- "Future of Computing Part 2, Page 3/3"
